A stronger recovery would have to wait until between 2017 and 2018, the Bank said.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies have lost steam because of the collapse of global commodity prices and will continue to struggle to regain momentum this year, The World Bank warned Monday.

The average growth rate in the region came in at 3% last year, a severe slowdown of 1.5 percentage points from the year before, The World Bank said in its twice-yearly Africa Pulse economic update. That is the slowest rate of economic expansion since 2009, when sub-Saharan Africa suffered delayed blowback form the global financial crisis....